The Senate voted 78-15 Friday to confirm Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden to serve as the next director of the CIA.
Hayden is currently the top deputy to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and is the former head of the National Security Agency.
"Gen. Hayden is a patriot and a dedicated public servant whose broad experience, dedication and expertise make him the right person to lead the CIA at this critical time," said President Bush after the Senate vote.
At NSA, Hayden presided over efforts to conduct electronic surveillance of phone calls between the United States and overseas, and to mine domestic phone call records. Those efforts have attracted controversy, but Hayden defended them.
"Everything that the agency has done has been lawful," he told reporters before his confirmation hearings. "It's been briefed to the appropriate members of Congress. The only purpose of the agency's activities is to preserve the security and the liberty of the American people. And I think we've done that."
While at NSA, Hayden undertook a thorough overhaul of the agency's operations. That included eliminating 750 in-house jobs and awarding a contract worth as much as $2 billion to upgrade the agency's information technology backbone. The 10-year pact is the largest outsourcing ever undertaken by an intelligence agency. In the process, Hayden raised the profile of the highly secretive agency.
Hayden replaces Porter Goss, who abruptly resigned as CIA chief earlier this month amid concerns about his management of the agency. Goss dismissed several high-ranking longtime agency employees after he took over the agency in September 2004.